Queen Victoria's coronation marked the beginning of a great age of splendor. Beneath the dazzling brilliance of the British reign, the First Industrial Revolution was drawing to a close, ushering in unprecedented urban growth. But behind this prosperity lay a heavy price paid by ordinary workers. Child laborers crawled through dark mines, women toiled day and night in textile mills, and overcrowded slums were ravaged by cholera and tuberculosis. The poor in workhouses labored in prison-like institutions in exchange for barely enough relief to survive.
On the European continent, the renowned Austrian Chancellor Metternich had single-handedly constructed the Concert of Europe, uniting the nations into a bulwark of the old order against the tide of revolution. The suffering brought by the Napoleonic Wars had ended, and compromises among the great powers had brought a brief peace to the long-suffering continent. Though the flames of revolution had temporarily died down, the ideals of nationalism and liberalism remained full of life.
Meanwhile, in the north, Tsarist Russia remained under the iron-fisted rule of Nicholas I. The uprising of the Decembrists still cast a long shadow, and the autocratic system grew ever more rigid. Serfs made up the vast majority of the population, bound to the land and subject to the whims of the nobility. Censorship was severe, illiteracy was widespread, and backward institutions and technology shackled the empire. Yet on this vast and silent land, currents of change were quietly stirring. When a serf's hand first touched a book, when railways and iron were laid across Siberia's frozen soil, the roar of steam engines would shatter the nobles' decadent world. As autocratic rule became a thing of the past, a transformed new Russia would emerge.
It's a very good book, and the author's quality is acceptable, but I'm a little curious: How did Russia have Vladivostok in 1838? When did it appear? Is it the Yokohama switch?
Good-looking, good-looking, good-looking